Conservatives Think Women Are “Pork”

Women Are Not “Pork”
Responding to President Obama's request, House Democrats cut a provision from the stimulus package that would expand contraceptive family planning for Medicaid patients-usually poor women and girls.

Why did this happen?

For years, reproductive justice activists have argued that the religious right's real agenda is not just to eliminate abortion, but to end the historic rupture between sex and reproduction that took place in the 20th century.

I understand why that rupture is unsettling. Ironically, I was on my way to lecture about Margaret Sanger in my history course at UC Berkeley when I heard the news. Sanger was vilified for wanting to give women the choice of when or whether to bear children. In short, she challenged all of human history by proposing an historic rupture between sexuality and the goal of reproduction. But if reproduction ceased to be the goal, sexuality might become yoked to pleasure.

That is the legacy the religious right has fought against, and it's that agenda that cut funding for family planning.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said, "How you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?"

Well, here's the answer. Consider the teenage girl who's sexually active. What happens to the economy when she bears a child without the means to support it? Conversely, what happens when she finishes her education, enters the labor force, earns a salary, and pays taxes? Do we want an unemployed poor woman to have more children than she can already feed, or do we want her to have access to contraception, get her life back on track, and hopefully find work instead of raising another child she cannot afford at this time?

The Congressional Budget Office also reported that by the third year of implementation, the measure would actually save $200 million over five years by preventing unwanted pregnancies and avoiding the Medicaid cost of delivering and then caring for these babies. The same CBO report found the House version of the stimulus would have a "noticeable impact on economic growth and employment in the next few years, with much of the mandatory spending for Medicaid and other programs likely to occur in the next 19 to 20 months." During the first three years, the CBO report said, the cost and savings are negligible.

This decision was an unnecessary political capitulation to Republicans. According to the AP and the Austin American-Statesman, the president was "courting Republican critics of the legislation" who had argued that contraception is not about stimulus or growth. Unfortunately, too many people have uncritically accepted that argument. But many others have noted that the package is filled with provisions for health care, which certainly includes family planning. Many other provisions, moreover, are also not growth-oriented, and yet it was poor women's bodies that Democrats bartered for the approval and votes from Republicans that they don't need and will seldom get.

That same morning, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert asked "Why anyone listens to [Republicans]?" Why, indeed. They want the Democrats to fail. They want the new president to fail. And so they described women's bodies as "pork" and asked that the funding be cut for contraception.

Women's groups are legitimately outraged at what has happened. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America called the measure a "victim of misleading attacks and partisan politics." Mary Jane Gallagher, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, said: "Family planners are devastated that President Obama and Congress have decided to take funding for critical family planning services out of the stimulus. Their willingness to abandon the millions of families across the country who are in need is devastating."

"The Medicaid Family Planning State Option fully belonged in the economic recovery package," said Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center. "The Republican leadership opposition to the provision shows how out of touch they are with what it takes to ensure the economic survival of working women and their families."

While Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) defended the measure as recently as last Sunday, President Barack Obama and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, bowed to Republican pressure and agreed to drop the measure. And although the Senate has not yet voted, it's unlikely that funding for expanded family planning will be approved. In short, the Democrats decided it just wasn't worth fighting about. According to the Washington Wire, one House Democratic aide said, "It ended up being a distraction and it will be removed."

So, poor women who want reproductive health care and contraception are both "pork" and a "distraction." Is this the change we have dreamed about?

President Obama certainly believes in contraception for poor women and girls on Medicaid. He won the election, as he recently pointed out. He doesn't have to cave in to Republican demands to restrict women's choices and health care.

The best way he and Democrats can handle this terribly misguided decision is to pass legislation to fund expanded family planning as soon as possible, before half the population wakes up and realizes that once again, women have been treated as expendable, and that their bodies have been bartered for political expediency.

Some Things Republicans Do Not Want America to Know About the Economy

Four Things the Republicans Don't Want You to Know About the Economy
1. Tax cuts don't always work.

In 1929, Herbert Hoover cut marginal tax rates to the lowest level in modern history (24 percent) and the economy still collapsed. In 1982, Ronald Reagan slashed taxes to the lowest level in 50 years and, in return, unemployment soared to the highest level in 50 years. In 2001 and 2003, George Bush cut taxes twice and yet unemployment rose to 6 percent. And that's to say nothing of the 2.6 million jobs lost in the final year of the Bush administration.

Tax cuts are politically popular, but they are not a panacea for our nation's economic woes. Cutting corporate tax rates won't stimulate the economy or create new jobs if there's no demand for the goods and services that businesses produce. And cutting estate taxes and capital gains taxes will primarily benefit the wealthy. Despite the GOP claims to the contrary, when you give rich people money, there's no guarantee they will use it in ways that will trickle down to the masses. If we're going to cut taxes, then tax cuts should be targeted to businesses that hire new workers or invest in infrastructure, or they should go to middle-class Americans, who have been losing their jobs, their homes, their health care, and their savings in the Bush economy.

2. Higher taxes don't necessarily hurt.

Nobody likes to pay taxes, but don't believe the hype that tax increases on the wealthy will hurt the economy or kill jobs. In 1944, Franklin Roosevelt raised marginal tax rates to an astoundingly high 94 percent and yet we still had almost full employment (1.2 percent unemployment), thanks to the war. Taxes fell after the war, but in 1951, Harry Truman raised taxes again (from 84 to 91 percent) and yet unemployment dropped by 50 percent. In fact, from 1947 to 1973, median family income rose 2.7 percent a year, even while the top marginal tax rate was never lower than 70 percent, twice the current rate.

Perhaps the best example of the utility of tax increases comes from recent history. In 1993, Bill Clinton defied every single Republican in the House of Representatives and raised marginal tax rates to almost 40 percent. Despite GOP predictions that businesses would go bankrupt and workers would be laid off, the U.S. enjoyed the longest peacetime economic expansion in history.

That doesn't mean we need to raise taxes right now in the midst of the recession, but it does mean we shouldn't be afraid of higher marginal tax rates or of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010. Republicans often complain that higher taxes will kill the economy, but there's not much evidence to support those fears.

3. Democrats are better at balancing the budget.

Republicans love to talk about balancing the federal budget...when somebody else is in charge of it. But during eight years of the Bush administration, we hardly heard a whimper from Republicans about balanced budgets, even as Democrats complained about the huge cost of fighting two wars and cutting taxes.

The truth is that no Republican president in my lifetime has ever balanced the budget. But the Democrats have balanced the budget five times during the same time span. Clinton did it four times and Lyndon Johnson did it once. The last Republican president to balance the budget was Eisenhower.

Yes we do need to balance the budget eventually, but this is not the right time. To do so would mean cutting government programs that serve those most at-risk in society and it would slow down the chance of recovery as the lack of government spending would contract the economy. But still, if you really want to balance the budget, the Democrats, historically speaking, are far more likely to do it.

4. Democrats create more jobs.

Republicans love to crow about the Reagan economy, but it pales in comparison to Bill Clinton's record. The U.S. economy created 21 million new jobs in the Clinton administration. That's more than the last three Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan, combined. And despite the GOP argument that the Republican Congress deserves credit for the Clinton economy, the truth is that seven million of those jobs were created in the first two years when Democrats, in control of both houses of Congress and the White House, raised taxes with virtually no Republican support.

But it's not just Clinton. Despite the well known economic woes the country faced under Jimmy Carter, the U.S. economy added 8 million new jobs from 1977 to 1980. That's more new jobs under 4 years of Carter than under 12 years of both Bush presidents combined. And for all the right-wing complaints about the failures of LBJ's "Great Society," they fail to mention that the economy created 10 million new jobs during Johnson's tenure, with a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, while fighting the Vietnam War and authorizing a massive expansion of the welfare state to include Medicare and Medicaid.

Republicans Scamming America on Obama's Stimulus Plan

Republicans Scamming America on Obama's Stimulus Plan
5. When you want to stimulate the economy, tax cuts always beat government spending hands-down.

Another conservative fantasy that disintegrates on contact with reality.

The chart that shows the effectiveness of various forms of government stimulus, based on recent attempts, is here. (Conservatives will be infuriated to learn that food stamps come out on top, generating $1.73 for every dollar spent. Infrastructure investments come in a respectable third. The bottom half of the chart is wall-to-wall tax cut schemes.)

The problem with tax cuts is that people don't spend them in ways that get the economy moving. The Wall Street Journal reports that only 10 to 20 percent of the money remanded to taxpayers in the 2008 tax rebate actually got spent. The other 80 to 90 percent ended up in people's personal savings, were used to pay off creditors, or were simply absorbed by inflation and higher living costs.

Knowing this, we're a bit dismayed Obama is proposing to sink as much as 40 percent of his stimulus package into tax cuts. That's too much, if you ask us. But at least they're targeted at the middle class -- people who are more likely to spend that money here in the U.S., rather than ship it off to investments abroad.
6. Large-scale government investment would inevitably turn into an orgy of waste, fraud and abuse.

True -- but only if we let conservatives run the show.

The fact is that all human endeavors -- from running a household to running a nation -- entail a fair amount of waste, fraud and abuse. Bad decisions get made. Greed gets the better of people. Not everybody is as honest as we'd wish them to be.

But in spite of that truth, nobody in history can top the Americans when it comes to planning and executing successful large-scale investment projects. (A thousand years from now, that's what they'll be saying about us: Not always smart about foreign policy, but man, could those people think big -- and they usually pulled it off, too.) In our happier past, good management, careful oversight, and clear accountability have always gone a long way toward preventing really big problems, and ensured that we got the most for our collective buck.

Unfortunately, if we've learned anything about conservatives at this late date, it's that they'll defang or dismantle these mechanisms every chance they get. They think rules are for lesser mortals, oversight is a form of Big Brother-style oppression, and accountability is for people who can't afford lobbyists and lawyers. I don't think anyone would even try argue any more that when it comes to waste, fraud, and abuse, conservatives are the hands-down experts.

What's ironic is that they're now offering edifying moral guidance to the rest of us on the subject. All you can do is point and giggle at the stupefying hypocrisy of it all.

Media advance falsehood that Pentagon has confirmed that 61 former Guantánamo detainees have returned to battlefield

Media advance falsehood that Pentagon has confirmed that 61 former Guantánamo detainees have returned to battlefield

Summary: Since President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring that the Pentagon's detention facilities at Guantánamo be closed within a year, numerous media figures and outlets have repeated or failed to challenge the claim that 61 former detainees held there have returned to the battlefield. In fact, the figure, which comes from the Pentagon, includes 43 former prisoners who are suspected of, but have not been confirmed as, having "return[ed] to the fight."

Holder Agrees Waterboarding Is Torture

Holder Agrees Waterboarding Is Torture
Attorney General-designate Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing that waterboarding is torture. As noted by The New York Times, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the committee, has been a longtime critic of the Bush administration’s approval of the torture technique used on detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Leahy didn’t waste time in probing Holder on his thoughts on the matter. Holder said that waterboarding has been defined as torture for centuries and that he agrees that, “Waterboarding is torture.”

Talking Points Memo also reported that during this morning’s confirmation hearings, Holder said he would re-examine federal prosecutors’ decision not to lodge criminal charges against the former Justice Department official, Bradley Schlozman for politicizing hiring at the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ and then lying to Congress about doing so. Holder told the committee, “I want to know why the determination was made not to pursue charges.” The DOJ’s office of inspector general and office of professional responsibility issued a report earlier this week lashing Schlozman, a former top official at the Civil Rights Division, for seeking to hire ideologues even for nonpolitical positions. That report also concluded that Schlozman gave false statements to Congress about his involvement in the politicization of the division.

Obama on Torture Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

Obama on Torture Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

The Obama administration will not focus on prosecuting government officials who practiced illegal torture or war crimes, the president-elect said on Sunday, though he added that prosecutions and independent commission have not been completely ruled out. This was Obama's first major statement on the issue since April; over the past few weeks, Obama's aides have repeatedly ducked questions about what, if anything, the administration will do to enforce laws violated by officials under President Bush. The question topped the list of citizen concerns on Change.gov last week, out of over 70,000 submissions, but Obama aide Robert Gibbs refused to respond, leading ABC's George Stephanopoulos to press the question during an interview on his Sunday show.

"My orientation's going to be to move forward," Obama said. The attorney general has to stay above politics and "uphold the Constitution," Obama added, but his administration will focus on "getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past."

This answer tracks the language of many torture apologists (and advocates) in Washington, who posit a choice between protecting the country today and second-guessing the past.

Enforcing laws and prosecuting criminal defendants, however, is inherently about "the past." Prosecutors always work on "past" crimes; there aren't many "forward-looking" prosecutors outside of Minority Report. If the Justice Department declines to enforce recent war crimes, it will not be freed up to go prevent future terrorist attacks. It will simply enforce other laws based on recent violations.

No one argues against prosecuting Bernie Madoff so that the Justice Department can focus on fixing the economy, going forward. In fact, faithfully and uniformly enforcing the law is crucial to "getting things right in the future." Any deterrence produced via criminal sanction is undermined when future, potential offenders see that a law is not actually enforced. People are more likely to follow the law when they see that breaking it carries consequences. This is such a basic foundation of our criminal system, justified by the elemental rationales of deterrence and retribution, it is quite hard to imagine that so many seasoned attorneys and Washington journalists honestly believe that the best way "forward" is to undermine deterrence and the rule of law.

FOX Trots Out Discredited Terrorism Expert To Complain About Balance At The New York Times

FOX Trots Out Discredited Terrorism Expert To Complain About Balance At The New York Times

n the same week that FOX News dug up discredited “terrorism expert” Steve Emerson to smear Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison as somehow being in cahoots with terrorists, it also trotted out Emerson to accuse the New York Times of “siding with Hamas.” What was Emerson's beef? The Times' coverage of Israel's war in Gaza was too balanced. Quite an irony for a network that brags about the importance of fairness and balance. With video.

In a segment on the January 7, 2009 edition of Hannity & Colmes, Alan Colmes' scripted introduction for the segment with Emerson said, “Terrorism expert Steve Emerson dissects what he says is The New York Times' clearly sympathetic view of Hamas when reporting on the Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza... Emerson says The Times is trying to humanize the terror group.”

The headline on FOXNews.com went further.

Terrorism Expert: New York Times Siding With Hamas

Colmes opened the interview by suggesting that a fair and balanced presentation is desirable in media coverage of the conflict.

Steve, The New York Times is an easy target, but would you honestly say that, in the United States, there's a fair and balanced presentation, media-wide, giving both sides of the issue here?

Emerson not only disagreed, he dismissed evenhandedness as “contrived.”

Well, Alan, the question is who's telling the truth? It's not a question of giving both sides. You can give the side of al Qaeda, and then you have a contrived evenhandedness. That's not the issue. The issue is telling the truth, equating the arsonist with a fireman. That's what The Times has done.

Later in the interview, Emerson went so far as to suggest that giving a balanced report was equivalent to treason.

Emerson: I saw on CNN Fareed Zakaria pepper an Israeli official, saying, "Well, how many were killed?" Well, you don't ask that question. You say, "How many rockets were fired," in order to understand the dilemma that Israeli has been facing.

Hannity: Steve, the answer is don't watch CNN. Thank you.

Emerson: I've got to watch what the enemy is saying.

While FOX was busy pimping hatred for the “liberal media,” they never told their viewers about Emerson's long history of scurrilous, anti-Muslim “punditry.” For example, last year, Emerson told Hannity & Colmes viewers that Muslim jihadists had infiltrated the Pentagon and other U.S. Agencies. Funny, how we haven't heard any follow up about that.

FAIR has more on Emerson's questionable "expertise." Think Progress noted that FOX is virtually the only news organization still willing to host Emerson.

Why Are the Media More Interested in Blago Than in Unraveling the Bailout Mystery?

Why Are the Media More Interested in Blago Than in Unraveling the Bailout Mystery? by Arianna Huffington
Have you heard what's going on with the government's almost trillion-dollar bailout and how your money is being spent? Do you know all you need to know about who's managing all that taxpayer money -- and how effectively it's being used?

Not if you're getting your news from cable TV. Judging by where the media are focusing their attention, you'd think the Blago/Burris/Reid and Kennedy/Paterson/Cuomo soap operas are the biggest issues facing the nation -- and that little thing about the potential collapse of the world's largest economy is just a sideshow.

Why have the media shown such relatively little interest in the utter lack of transparency about the bailout. Is it because they are still in campaign mode -- addicted to small bore, quick burn-out stories?

The time has come to recalibrate. As Obama transitions to governing mode, so should the press. Admittedly, governing stories aren't usually as sexy as campaign stories -- but the reason we cared so much about the campaign in the first place was to get to the governing.

On top of it, the bailout is a fascinating story. Not so much a whodunit as a who's-doing-it. This mystery is unfolding right in front of us, and the size of the victim pool could very well depend on whether we unravel the mystery in flashback or while it's still in progress.

Like most good mysteries, this one has a huge cast of characters -- like the Dickensianly named Neel Kashkari, the young Goldman banker put in charge of the bailout at the Treasury Department, the sharp-tongued Barney Frank, and the earnest and increasingly bewildered Hank Paulson, who started off the bailout process by romantically getting down on one knee in front of Nancy Pelosi and proposing to make the whole thing official.

But what we know is clearly dwarfed by what we don't know, because at every point in this story, the government has chosen to draw the curtains.

Just last week, four firms -- Goldman, Blackrock, Wellington and PIMCO -- were selected to manage the $500 billion account of mortgage-backed securities for the Fed. But how they were selected, what they're getting paid, and what they plan on doing with the money is all under wraps. "The selection of these managers seems incredibly opaque," Jeffrey Gundlach, an expert in mortgage-backed securities, told TPMmuckraker.

The head of one of the firms, Bill Gross of PIMCO, assured CNBC last month that "PIMCO would be the leader here in suggesting to the Treasury that we would work for no fee." So is Gross holding to his no fee pledge? We don't know - and the government isn't in any rush to tell us.

As a GAO report last month dryly concluded: "The rapid pace of implementation and evolving nature of the program have hampered efforts to put a comprehensive system of internal control in place. Until such a system is fully developed and implemented, there is heightened risk that the interests of the government and taxpayers may not be adequately protected and that the program objectives may not be achieved in an efficient and effective manner." In other words, the money is flying out the door but no one is watching where it's going.

The report also noted that the government still isn't able to say what the banks did with the first infusion of bailout money. In a response letter, Kashkari wouldn't say, but noted that the Fed has a "different perspective" on judging what the banks are doing with the money. And just what is this "perspective"? He wouldn't say. His perspective is that we can't know his perspective.

Of course, a lack of oversight was a key reason why Paulson's original bailout proposal was shot down. So some controls were written into the legislation so it could pass. And then what happened to the controls? Did they evaporate? Did they disappear up David Blaine's sleeve? Were they too toothless to begin with? We don't really know. As Eric Thorson, the Treasury's inspector general said, six weeks after the bill passed, "It's a mess. I don't think anyone understands right now how we're going to do proper oversight of this thing."

If the media don't go after this story with the same passion they went after morsels from the campaign trail, or with the same intensity they are going after every Blago/Burris nugget, and allow the government and its cronies to disperse a huge pot of taxpayer money behind closed doors, we know what's going to happen. And that's because we've seen this same scenario played out before -- in Iraq. In a devastating Rolling Stone piece, Naomi Klein details "the many worrying parallels between the administration's approach to the financial crisis and its approach to the Iraq War." She writes that "under cover of an emergency, Treasury is rapidly turning into an economic Green Zone, overrun with private companies collecting lucrative contracts." If the reconstruction of our economy follows the path of the reconstruction of Iraq, we are in for a very long, very hard -- and very painful -- economic slog.
There is an all-too-real economic drama playing out behind the drawn curtain -- a mystery waiting to be unraveled. And journalistic careers to be made by those doing the unraveling. So what are the media waiting for?

White House Asked Howard To Stay In Blair House To Give ‘Some Plausible Reason’ For Refusing Obama

White House Asked Howard To Stay In Blair House To Give ‘Some Plausible Reason’ For Refusing Obama
In December, President-elect Obama asked the White House if he and his family could move into Blair House — the White House’s guest house — a week early, so that his daughters Malia and Sasha could start school. The White House rebuffed them, saying the house was already booked for another guest. A White House source added that “Blair House was appalled” by the request.

After weeks of speculation, the mystery guest that trumps the President-elect and his family has finally been revealed. The White House offered the house to John Howard, the former Prime Minister of Australia who is set to receive a Medal of Freedom. Instead of arranging other accommodations for Howard’s one-night stay, the Bush administration told the Obama family to stay in a hotel for two weeks. (Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who are also receiving the Medal of Freedom, opted to find other accommodations.)

Last night on MSNBC’s “Countdown,” Bloomberg journalist Margaret Carlson revealed that when the White House turned down Obama’s request in early December, it had not yet even invited Howard to stay at the Blair House:

I reported…on December 11 and 12 that there were no foreign dignitaries booked into Blair House during that period of time. … I have the feeling they asked him [Howard] to come and stay so that there might be some plausible reason for not letting the Obamas stay there.

She also pointed out that Blair House has “119 rooms with 35 bathrooms. Howard wouldn’t even have to share a sink with the Obamas.” Watch it:

That the White House choose to prioritize the former prime minister of Australia over the incoming President of the United States emphasizes Bush’s sense of loyalty. Howard, a darling of the right wing, was one of Bush’s biggest cheerleaders whom Bush has called his “mate of steel” for standing with him on Iraq and being the only leader of an industrialized nation — besides Bush, of course — to refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

Still, supplanting the incoming President with Howard seems like a final, petty kick in the teeth from Bush.

Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression?

Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression?
If you're like me, you sometimes find yourself speechless when confronted with abject insanity.

If you're like me, for instance, you were dumbfounded when "Forrest Gump" beat out "Pulp Fiction" for best picture; when HBO's "Sopranos" received more accolades than "The Wire"; and when George W. Bush insisted Iraqi airplanes were about to drop WMD on American cities.

So if you're like me, you probably understand why I was momentarily tongue-tied last week after running face-first into conservatives' newest (and most ridiculous) talking point: the one designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package.

During a Christmas Eve appearance on Fox News, I pointed out that most mainstream economists believe the government must boost the economy with deficit spending. That's when conservative pundit Monica Crowley said we should instead limit such spending because President Franklin Roosevelt's "massive government intervention actually prolonged the Great Depression." Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett eagerly concurred, saying "historians pretty much agree on that."

Of course, I had recently heard snippets of this silly argument; right-wing pundits are repeating it everywhere these days. But I had never heard it articulated in such preposterous terms, so my initial reaction was paralysis, the mouth-agape, deer-in-the-headlights kind. Only after collecting myself did I say that such assertions about the New Deal were absurd. But then I was laughed at, as if it was hilarious to say that the New Deal did anything but exacerbate the Depression.

Afterward, suffering pangs of self-doubt, I wondered whether I and most of the country were the crazy ones. Sure, the vast majority of Americans think the New Deal worked well. But are conservatives right? Did the New Deal's "massive government intervention prolong the Great Depression?"

Ummm ... no.

On deeper examination, I discovered that the right bases its New Deal revisionism on the short-lived recession in a year straddling 1937 and 1938. But that was four years into Roosevelt's term -- four years marked by spectacular economic growth. Additionally, the fleeting decline happened not because of the New Deal's spending programs, but because Roosevelt momentarily listened to conservatives and backed off them. As Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, in 1937-38, FDR "was persuaded to balance the budget" and "cut spending and the economy went back down again."

To be sure, you can credibly argue that the New Deal had its share of problems. But overall, the numbers prove it helped -- rather than hurt -- the macroeconomy. "Excepting 1937-1938, unemployment fell each year of Roosevelt's first two terms [while] the U.S. economy grew at average annual growth rates of 9 percent to 10 percent," writes University of California historian Eric Rauchway.

What about the New Deal's most "massive government intervention" -- its financial regulations? Did they prolong the Great Depression in ways the official data didn't detect?

Nope.

According to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, "Only with the New Deal's rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression." In fact, even famed conservative economist Milton Friedman admitted that the New Deal's Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was "the structural change most conducive to monetary stability since ... the Civil War."

OK -- if the verifiable evidence proves the New Deal did not prolong the Depression, what about historians -- do they "pretty much agree" on the opposite?

Again, no.

As Newsweek's Daniel Gross reports, "One would be very hard-pressed to find a serious professional historian who believes that the New Deal prolonged the Depression."

But that's the critical point I somehow forgot last week, the truism we must all remember in 2009: As conservatives try to obstruct a new New Deal, they're not making any arguments that are remotely serious.

200,000 Vets Are Sleeping on the Streets

200,000 Vets Are Sleeping on the Streets By Aaron Glantz
Roy Lee Brantley shivers in the cold December morning as he waits in line for food outside the Ark of Refuge mission, which sits amid warehouses and artists lofts a stone's throw from the skyscrapers of downtown San Francisco.

Brantley's beard is long, white and unkempt. The African-American man's skin wrinkled beyond his 62 years. He lives in squalor in a dingy residential hotel room with the bathroom down the hall. In some ways, his current situation marks an improvement. "I've slept in parks," he says, "and on the sidewalk. Now at least I have a room."

Like the hundreds of others in line for food, Brantley has worn the military uniform. Most, like Brantley, carry their service IDs and red, white and blue cards from the Department of Veterans Affairs in their wallets or around their necks. In 1967, he deployed to Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry Division of the U.S. Army. By the time he left the military five years later, Brantley had attained the rank of sergeant and been decorated for his valor and for the wounds he sustained in combat.

"I risked my life for this democracy and got a Bronze Star," he says. "I shed blood for this country and got the Purple Heart after a mortar blast sent shrapnel into my face and leg. But when I came back home from Vietnam I was having problems. I tried to hurt my wife because she was Filipino. Every time I looked at her I thought I was in Vietnam again. So we broke up."

In 1973, Brantley filed a disability claim with the federal government for mental wounds sustained in combat overseas. Over the years, the Department of Veterans Affairs has denied his claim five separate times. "You go over there and risk your life for America and your mind's all messed up, America should take care of you, right," he says, knowing that for him and the other veterans in line for free food that promise has not been kept.

On any given night 200,000 U.S. veterans sleep homeless on the streets of America. One out of every four people -- and one out of every three men -- sleeping in a car, in front of a shop door, or under a freeway overpass has worn a military uniform. Some like Brantley have been on the streets for years. Others are young and women returning home wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan, quickly slipping through the cracks.

For each of these homeless veterans, America's promise to "Support the Troops" ended the moment he or she took off the uniform and tried to make the difficult transition to civilian life. There, they encountered a hostile and cumbersome bureaucracy set up by the Department of Veterans Affairs. In a best-case scenario, a wounded veteran must wait six months to hear back from the VA. Those who appeal a denial have to wait an average of four and a half years for their answer. In the six months leading up to March 31st of this year, nearly 1,500 veterans died waiting to learn if their disability claims would be approved by the government.

There are patriotic Americans trying to solve this problem. Last month, two veterans' organizations, Vietnam Veterans of America and Veterans of Modern Warfare, filed suit in federal court demanding the government decide disability claims brought by wounded soldiers within three months. Predictably, however, the VA is trying to block the effort. On December 17, their lawyers convinced Reggie Walton, a judge appointed by President Bush, who ruled that imposing a quicker deadline for payment of benefits was a task for Congress and the president-not the courts.